PARP1 has a role in repair of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) breaks. Knocking down intracellular PARP1 levels with siRNA or inhibiting PARP1 activity with small molecules reduces repair of ssDNA breaks. In the absence of PARP1, when these breaks are encountered during DNA replication, the replication fork stalls, and double-strand DNA (dsDNA) breaks accumulate. These dsDNA breaks are repaired via homologous recombination (HR) repair, a potentially error-free repair mechanism. For this reason, cells lacking PARP1 show a hyper-recombinagenic phenotype (e.g., an increased frequency of HR),[4][5][6] which has also been observed in vivo in mice using the pun assay.[7] Thus, if the HR pathway is functioning, PARP1 null mutants (cells without functioning PARP1) do not show an unhealthy phenotype, and in fact, PARP1 knockout mice show no negative phenotype and no increased incidence of tumor formation.[8]

However, both BRCA1 and BRCA2 are at least partially necessary for the HR pathway to function. Therefore, cells that are deficient in BRCA1 or BRCA2 have been shown to be highly sensitive to PARP1 inhibition or knock-down, resulting in cell death by apoptosis, in stark contrast to cells with at least one good copy of both BRCA1 and BRCA2. Many breast cancers have defects in the BRCA1/BRCA2 HR repair pathway due to mutations in either BRCA1 or BRCA2, or other essential genes in the pathway (the latter termed cancers with "BRCAness"). Tumors with BRCAness are hypothesized to be highly sensitive to PARP1 inhibitors, and it has been demonstrated in mice that these inhibitors can both prevent BRCA1/2-deficient xenografts from becoming tumors and eradicate tumors having previously formed from BRCA1/2-deficient xenografts.

It is hypothesized that PARP1 inhibitors may prove highly effective therapies for cancers with BRCAness, due to the high sensitivity of the tumors to the inhibitor and the lack of deleterious effects on the remaining healthy cells with functioning BRCA HR pathway. This is in contrast to conventional chemotherapies, which are highly toxic to all cells and can induce DNA damage in healthy cells, leading to secondary cancer generation.[9][10]

PARP activity (which is mainly due to PARP1) measured in the permeabilized mononuclear leukocyte blood cells of thirteen mammalian species (rat, guinea pig, rabbit, marmoset, sheep, pig, cattle, pigmy chimpanzee, horse, donkey, gorilla elephant and man) correlates with maximum lifespan of the species.[11]Lymphoblastoid cell lines established from blood samples of humans who were centenarians (100 years old or older) have significantly higher PARP activity than cell lines from younger (20 to 70 years old) individuals.[12] The Wrn protein is deficient in persons with Werner syndrome, a human premature aging disorder. PARP1 and Wrn proteins are part of a complex involved in the processing of DNA breaks.[13] These findings indicate a linkage between longevity and PARP-mediated DNA repair capability. Furthermore these observations suggest that PARP repair activity contributes to mammalian longevity, consistent with the DNA damage theory of aging.[14]

PARP1 appears to be resveratrol's primary functional target through its interaction with the tyrosyl tRNA synthetase (TyrRS).[15]